Notes on our basic Python programming review

A note to those new to programming/Python

The contents of Lesson 3 (all 12 parts of it!) are by far the longest lesson in the course. This first lesson is meant to help get you up to speed with some of the main ideas in Python programming to help make the rest of the class proceed more smoothly. It may take you a while to read/work through the lesson. Please be patient. Also do not worry if you do not have full mastery of everything. The concepts will be reinforced during the course.

If you are a complete beginner with Python, but have experience programming, you should be able to work through these lessons, learn some of the syntax and principles of the language, and be fine for this course. You may need to put in a little more work in the beginning to get up to speed, though.

If you are a complete beginner with programming in general, the learning curve you will need to climb is very steep. I would recommend instead taking my Introduction to Programming in the Biological Sciences Bootcamp in the summer and enrolling in this course in the next academic year.

A note to Pythonistas

You may already be an excellent Python programmer. Or you may have taken the Introduction to Programming in the Biological Sciences Bootcamp with me. You may find this lesson to be review. Former bootcampers will even find some identical text to what we did in the bootcamp. I encourage you to still read carefully and to help your teammates for whom this is new with their work. This will help further cement these foundational skills for you.